B. G. Scriven

B. G. SCRIVEN. A residence of half a century in the state gives special interest to the career of B. G. Scriven, who founded and is now mayor of the Town of Lucas in Russell County. Mr. Scriven went to Lucas County when it was a virtual wilderness, and as a farmer, stockman and business man has been identified with every phase of development in and around the Town of Lucas.

He represents old American stock. There were two brothers who came from England in colonial times, one of them locating in New York State and the other in Pennsylvania. B. G. Scriven is descended from the New York branch of the family. His grandfather, John Scriven, was a farmer at Hoosick Falls, New York, and died there before B. C. Scriven was born.

Schuyler Scriven, father of the Lucas mayor, was born at Hoosick Falls, New York, in 1813, and in early manhood moved out to Illinois and located at Groveland, where he married and where he followed farming and various business enterprises for many years. He died at Groveland in 1896. He was prominent in local affairs, held township offices, and though he began voting as a democrat was later a republican. He was a Methodist and a member of the Masonic fraternity. Schuyler Scriven married Julia Greeley, who was born in New Hampshire in 1818 and died at Groveland, Illinois, in 1896. Of their five children B. G. Scriven was the third. May Frances, the oldest, is the wife of Norman Sunderland, a retired farmer at Delavan, Illinois. Addie V., who died at Rockport, Texas, married Peter Warner, a Methodist minister, also deceased. Carlos runs a restaurant at Lebanon, Kansas, and Almeda, unmarried, lives at Delavan, Illinois.

B. G. Scriven was born in Groveland, Illinois, June 3, 1848. He acquired a liberal education, attended the public schools of his native town, and later the State Normal School of Bloomington, Illinois, where he graduated in 1869. Almost immediately after leaving school he came to Kansas, first locating in Salina, and farmed in that community for a couple of years. Mr. Scriven went to Lincoln City, Kansas, in 1872, and in 1873 arrived as a pioneer in that part of Russell County where the Town of Lucas is today. His memory recalls when there was not a house in sight over that entire country, and he was a resident of Kansas long before the buffalo and Indian disappeared from the plains. Of the thousands of acres of farming land which he can overlook today there was not them a furrow turned. Mr. Scriven homesteaded 160 acres, still owns that, and has altogether 400 acres well developed as a farming proposition. From part of this farm he set off the townsite of Lucas, and is credited with the chief influence which established that village. Lucas was first established in 1877 under another name, and the change to the name of Lucas in 1887 was suggested by Mr. Scriven. Mr. Scriven helped organize in 1887 the Lucas State Bank, and served as its vice president several years. This is now the First National Bank of Lucas. He is also president of the Lucas Telephone Company.

In politics he has always been a republican. At one time he filled the office of justice of the peace, and in April, 1917, his fellow citizens asked him to serve as mayor and he still has that office. He is Past Grand of Lucas Lodge of Odd Fellows and a member of Lucas Camp, Modern Woodmen of America.

In March, 1872, at Salina, Kansas, Mr. Scriven married Miss Josephine Webster, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Webster, both now deceased. Her father was an early settler of Salina and for many years a stockman. Mrs. Scriven, who died in April, 1916, was the mother of eight children, the record of whom is a credit to her training and must be a matter of special satisfaction to Mr. Scriven in his declining years.

The oldest child, J. H. Scriven, graduated from the Salina Business College and is now a farmer at Lucas. For fifteen years he was closely associated with his father in the hardware and implement business. Mr. Scriven has been a merchant at Lucas for the past thirty years and still has some interests in that line, though not so extensive as formerly. Lila M., the second child, graduated from the Lucas High School, and is also a graduate in music of the Kansas Wesleyan University of Salina. She is very talented musically. Lila married Sam Buell, a traveling salesman, and they now live at Siloam Springs, Arkansas. Etha, the third child, graduated A. B. from Kansas University at Lawrence, and is the wife of Harry Orris, a laundry proprietor at Manhattan. Cecile was the first graduate of the Lucas High School, being the only one to finish the studies that year. Later she graduated A. B. from Ottawa University and from the Fort Hays Normal School. She is now a teacher at Natoma, Kansas. C. G. Scriven graduated from the Lucas High School and the Salina Business College and is now manager and secretary of the Lucas Telephone Company. Jessie, a graduate in music from the Lindsborg College and of the Fort Hays Normal School, is a young woman of more than local reputation in musical and educational circles. She is now taking a postgraduate normal course at Fort Hays and is also a teacher in that town. Leslie, a graduate of the Lucas High School and the Salina Business College, is employed in a mill at Salina. Flavel, the youngest of the children, graduated from the Lucas High School and from the Kansas State Agricultural College at Manhattan, and is now a member of the famous Marines organization and was on duty during the culminating weeks of the war with Germany.

Pages 2329-2330.